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Here is a better article that gives away how the clues were matched to the book, the book being the same one that inspired Robinson Crusoe: https://www.livesci

Here is a better article that gives away how the clues were matched to the book, the book being the same one that inspired Robinson Crusoe: https://www.livescience.com/61351-blackbeard-pirate-book-fragments.html https://www.livescience.com/61351-blackbeard-pirate-book-fra... We are somewhat naive about how people understood the world in former times. People have been trading goods across continents for thousands of years. Much like how we have no idea where are stuff from China comes from in any detail, so it was in former times when buying spices from Africa or India. You might buy pepper corns and have no idea they came from Africa. Much of what we call piracy was the unofficial British Royal Navy, trading stuff all around the world. Britain was highly invested in everything maritime and sailors were the astronauts of the day. They did difficult navigational things with sextants, compass things and much more, all requiring manuals and therefore requiring literacy. Plus reading was fun in an era before TV. So why do we portray pirates from times gone by as speaking funny with parrots on their shoulders and a peg-leg?

sitharus 9y ago
We picture pirates as speaking with an English West Country accent for a couple of reasons. Edward Teach, who became famous as Blackbeard, was from somewhere in the Bristol region so would presumably have spoken with this accent. Also the 1952 film "Blackbeard the Pirate" cast a Dorset-born actor in the lead role, who also spoke with a West Country accent, cementing the accent in popular culture. The peg-leg is a old popular image of experienced sailors. Sailing has always been a highly risky occupation and it's easy to lose a leg to due gangrene from splinters, scurvy, cannonball impact or getting it caught in the rigging. I can't explain the parrot though.
- zaroth 9y ago
  But if you accept the parrot, it explains the eyepatch! The eyepatch being a direct result of the parrot.
  - codingdave 9y ago
    I thought the eyepatch was already well explained as a tool to keep one eye used to the dark, in order to make it easier to switch between being on the deck and in the hold.
    - Theodores 9y ago
      That is my new fact for the day!
- yesenadam 9y ago
  Stevenson's Treasure Island has a one-legged West Country pirate with a parrot on his shoulder - Long John Silver. The parrot was taken from Robinson Crusoe. The Arrr apparently dates from the 1930s movie versions. Stevenson wrote: "Treasure Island came out of Kingsley's At Last, where I got the Dead Man's Chest—and that was the seed—and out of the great Captain Johnson's History of the Notorious Pirates." And Long John Silver was apparently based on his friend W.E. Henley, who had a leg amputated at the knee due to TB. Incidentally, after Lister (the pioneer of modern antiseptic surgery) saved his other foot, Henley wrote the famous poem Invictus, which ends with the lines - I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

sitharus 9y ago

We picture pirates as speaking with an English West Country accent for a couple of reasons. Edward Teach, who became famous as Blackbeard, was from somewhere in the Bristol region so would presumably have spoken with this accent. Also the 1952 film "Blackbeard the Pirate" cast a Dorset-born actor in the lead role, who also spoke with a West Country accent, cementing the accent in popular culture. The peg-leg is a old popular image of experienced sailors. Sailing has always been a highly risky occupation and it's easy to lose a leg to due gangrene from splinters, scurvy, cannonball impact or getting it caught in the rigging. I can't explain the parrot though.

zaroth 9y ago
But if you accept the parrot, it explains the eyepatch! The eyepatch being a direct result of the parrot.
- codingdave 9y ago
  I thought the eyepatch was already well explained as a tool to keep one eye used to the dark, in order to make it easier to switch between being on the deck and in the hold.
  - Theodores 9y ago
    That is my new fact for the day!
yesenadam 9y ago
Stevenson's Treasure Island has a one-legged West Country pirate with a parrot on his shoulder - Long John Silver. The parrot was taken from Robinson Crusoe. The Arrr apparently dates from the 1930s movie versions. Stevenson wrote: "Treasure Island came out of Kingsley's At Last, where I got the Dead Man's Chest—and that was the seed—and out of the great Captain Johnson's History of the Notorious Pirates." And Long John Silver was apparently based on his friend W.E. Henley, who had a leg amputated at the knee due to TB. Incidentally, after Lister (the pioneer of modern antiseptic surgery) saved his other foot, Henley wrote the famous poem Invictus, which ends with the lines - I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.